How to Optimise Images for the New Twitter Feed

In case you missed it, Twitter recently rolled out image previews within users’ feeds. Users will no longer need to click on image links from pic.twitter.com or ‘Expand’ links on posts to view visual content, eliminating an extra step to view images and engage with Tweets.

With these updates images visible within the stream are automatically cropped into a rectangular shape, regardless of the image size. This means if the image is a square, not all of the content will be visible and users will need to click on the image to see the entire size. While this feature enables users to see the part of the image, it still creates an additional step to achieve engagement. If a brand’s image is optimised for the timeline, this will remove the additional actions and create a more streamlined process for followers to retweet, favourite or reply.

To optimise images for the updated Twitter stream, it is recommended that they be created in landscape format, sized to 1024 x 576 px. Users will no longer need to click ‘Expand’ links on posts to view visual content. Images will then appear directly in a user’s stream encouraging seamless engagement directly from the Tweet.